Novelty
by gypsy season
Summary: In college, Lisa Cuddy hangs a white board on her door. This leads to an innocent exchange that might be considered flirting. And deja vu.


**Novelty**

Dedicated to the anonymous few who have fueled my amusement and fascinated with white boards in college.

The novelty of going away to college was having a plastic white board on your door. The practicality was that when Lisa Cuddy pulled all-nighters studying for a lab in the following morning and pulled the phone cord out of the wall, her friends could still leave her messages without a distracting ring. She would see on the way to the bathroom, the only reason she left the room on these all-nighters.

Or she could write 'Gone Home – back next week' so no one would knock and bother her, or 'Died – please feed fish' when her grueling overloaded schedule had sucked too much life out of her so she could do no more than continue with the studying.

At 4 am, Lisa finally stood up, cracked her back, sore from hunching over her desk, and went out to the bathroom. On her way back, she noticed a haiku scrawled on her white board:

'Drop a class, or two

Do you have a social life?

You have a nice ass.'

Two years ago, she would have suspected that whoever had written the note had mistaken her board for someone else's. But she smiled knowingly, because she had worked hard for that ass, and was grateful that people were noticing it, grateful that the repercussions of a good body were but harmless haikus and the occasional catcall.

She uncapped her marker and wrote neatly beneath the poem: 'Studying; Come back when I graduate.'

There was a message waiting for her when she returned from the next day's classes. 'That long a wait? Damn. Good luck on the test.'

'Thanks. Cutting up livers was a blast.' She wrote below, but was uncertain that her sarcasm would go unnoticed. Fearing whoever was writing her these notes would think of her as some kind of geeky liver-chopping lover, she added the word 'sarcasm' to her note and closed it with parentheses.

From the promptness of the first reply, she was disappointed to find her board unchanged later that evening, when she left for dinner, having stayed in all afternoon to study. In fact, she hated to admit it, but she was almost looking forward to another note.

Later that night, Lisa couldn't quite explain why, but she was pleased, so pleased, to come home to a picture of a dead fish (with x's for eyes), followed by a question mark. She drew a tank around the fish, and then a box labeled 'fish food' dangling above.

This innocent exchange went on for two weeks. It ended when Lisa, hearing the sound of someone un-capping a marker, leaped from her chair like it was aflame and flung the door open only to find that fourth year student who had humiliated her in front of an entire lecture hall. She could feel her cheeks flushing as the memory rushed back into the forefront of her thought process.

"Give me the marker, Greg," she demanded, snatching it from him before he had the chance to refuse. He still held the cap, though, and she got black scribbles all over her palm. Narrowing her eyes, she slammed the door on Greg's accomplished smile and threw the marker into the garbage.

She was incredibly disappointed.

So when, years later, she found a receipt for one plastic white board on her desk at the PPTH, she felt her face flush. There was also a note, stapled to the receipt, which read simply, 'I expect to be fully reimbursed. Your hospital; my board.'

Cuddy then noticed just how tightly she had crumpled the receipt in her fist.

She pulled her drawer, telling her Id to reach for a scissor, but picked up a marker instead.

When House returned to his office after lunch with Wilson, he found a 20-dollar bill taped to the glass door. On it, written in black marker, he read, 'You owe me $3.50.'

Amused, smiling, House pocketed the bill, and, ignoring Wilson's query, limped into his office. He had no intention of paying Cuddy back, so he took a pen off his desk and scribbled something on a post-it.

"Hey Jimmy, any plans of walking past Cuddy's officex?"


End file.
